For a eulogy on Mark Strand you wont do better than my friend Blues, which I reprint here for your edification. I was in the class and at the party, and although Strand correctly never thought much of me, I was always grateful Blue seemed to: In 1996 I took an American Lit class that was team-taught by Strand and Larzer Ziff. Strand showed up most of the time but hadnt always done the reading. To us he was a comic figure. He had two famous poems, the stupid one about eating poetry and another called Reasons For Moving, and a sideline going in art criticism. I believe he had a rich wife, I believe he had a wine collection. He was handsome and debonair, lightly scornful of the university, accomplished enough. He was not brilliant but he had an independent mind. He wrote a kind of pure, minimal, rhetorical poetry that started from Surrealism and wound up in a moderate visionary mode. A minor poet, but a real poet, in the shape of a man of leisure, which was a relief from the usual pedants and pseudo-revolutionaries. It was nice to have him around. I impressed him once with a comment about Emersons deliberate self-blinding. He praised me for it at a party afterwards in front of my date, which probably helped a lot but wasnt enough to get me over.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 01:17:19 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015